On the Theory of Designing Circuits using Genetic Programming and a Minimum of Domain Knowledge

Source:

Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, IEEE Press, Anchorage, Alaska, USA, p.130--135 (1998)

Keywords:

genetic algorithms; genetic programming

Abstract:

The problem of analog circuit design is a difficult problem that is generally viewed as requiring human intelligence to solve. Considerable progress has been made in automating the design of certain categories of purely digital circuits; however, the design of analog electrical circuits and mixed analog-digital circuits has not proved to be as amenable to automation. When critical analog circuits are required for a project, skilled and highly trained experts are necessary. Previous work on applying genetic programming to the design of analog circuits has proved to be successful at evolving a wide variety of circuits, including filters, amplifiers, and computational circuits; however, previous approaches have required the specification of an appropriate embryonic circuit. This paper explores a method to eliminate even this small amount of problem specific knowledge, and, in addition, proves that the representation used is capable of producing all circuits.